This week I have the privilege of hosting guest blogger Franklin Thomas, having worked for Anthony Robbins for five and a half years as a Peak Performance coach, coaching over 1200 people from 36 different countries, he is an expert in helping individuals achieve success.

I have been focusing on goal setting for the past couple of weeks, so I thought it would be great to have Franklin share what it takes to achieve our goals, especially writing goals, that we set for ourselves in 2016. I hope you enjoy this post, please feel free to ask him any questions in the comments box below.

It’s not about setting goals…

Have you ever started something and didn’t make it to the finish line? We all have. When it comes to personal achievement there are several components to reaching success and it’s not always about settings goals. Setting a goal is important, however, if that’s all you do, it won’t be enough. For instance, we all know someone who has tried to lose weight and failed- they get a gym membership, change their eating habits, but fall short of their goal. On the other hand, we know people who followed the exact same strategy and achieved their outcome with great success. Why is that… why does someone fail and another reach success?

It’s all about emotional drive

In order to get where you want to go, you really need to have the drive to get you there. Drive is the intense emotional fuel that will catapult you to the next level. It will take you to new heights and in those moments where you start to experience resistance, drive will be there to help push you through and continue on. When you have the emotional drive, suddenly what would normally be work for you becomes effortless and easy. We can spot drive a mile away. For instance, when we watch an Olympic athlete, we can see it in their eyes, in their body and the way they move and breathe. We usually can spot the winner before they even cross the finish line – the signs are there! An athlete just didn’t get to the Olympics by accident – all of what you see is by his or her intention, fueled by an intense emotional connection to what they want. Emotional drive is the most important thing for you to cultivate – It will change everything!

So how do I get intense emotional drive?

Ask yourself the question… Is what I want to achieve just a desire, or is it a MUST?

Anyone can have a desire, but desire alone rarely gets us there. For example, I could desire to buy a new car, but if I don’t have enough emotional attachment to getting a new car, then I won’t go to a car dealership, look at cars, take a test drive, fill out the paperwork, and then drive one off the lot. However, if I change one word, from desire to MUST, then what happens? Consider the two statements below:

– I desire to write a book.

– I must write a book.

Which one of these has more energy? MUST of course. When you say must, there is already an expectation of the book getting finished.

So how is drive accomplished and how do I make what I want, a must?

It’s accomplished by three things:

Physiology: How you posture your body, how you breathe, and how you move.

Belief: What you hold to be true – what you focus on.

Language: What you verbally say out loud and your internal dialogue.

Think about when a martial artist goes to split a stack of boards with his bare hands, how is he standing? His body is erect and grounded. He stands with confidence. His movements are fast and assured with precision. His energy is high. His breathing isn’t shallow or fearful, but it’s deep and strong. His focus is sharp – it’s only him and the stack. His focus is on the other side of the boards, not on the surface. He has fierce courage and if he doesn’t break through the first time, he instantly strikes again so that his mind does not even have the chance to process doubt. He does not let failure enter his mind. He says ‘Kiai’ (Hi-yah!) because to the martial artist, these words are how he expresses victory.

So how is he able to break through the board? He not only has developed the skills to do so, he also has created inside of himself the resourcefulness to achieve his outcome. If he approached breaking the boards with fear, uncertainty, depression, slow body movement, low energy and an internal dialogue that keeps instilling doubt, then we all know what his result would be – failure.

If you want to accomplish great things, then there must be a congruency between you and the thing you want to achieve.

As humans, we are stimulus response beings.

Everything you feel and all the emotions you have are tied to your body responding to the things you think about, what you believe and how you posture, move and breathe. To give you an example, we all know what it’s like to stand in confidence and we can all recognize a confident person when we see one.

There is a part of your brain called the hypothalamus. The hypothalamus is the brain’s chemical plant. The only way you feel anything is because your brain creates the chemical for you to feel that emotion. For instance, when you stand in a posture of confidence, your brain at the unconscious level picks up on it, and then the hypothalamus starts producing the chemicals so that you start to feel confident. The same thing happens when it comes to belief. Whatever we believe to be true, at the deepest level becomes our reality and our hypothalamus churns the chemicals to support those beliefs. The same thing happens with language. Our unconscious mind doesn’t know the difference between the truth and a lie. It only takes in what we repeat to it over and over and then eventually accepts it as truth. We all know what happens if someone tells a lie long enough? They end up believing it. The reason for this is, when they repeat it over and over again verbally, the unconscious mind picks it up and it becomes internal truth. Like the Proverb says, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue”.

So what now?

If you want success in the things you want to achieve, then you need to cultivate the emotional resourcefulness to get you there. The great thing about this is, we already know instinctively how to do this. Let’s try the following example. If you wanted to instill confidence in yourself, would you:

Stand – erect or slack?

Posture your face – would it be down or up?

Posture your shoulders – slumped or up?

What about your breathing – shallow or deep?

How about your movements – slow, or certain & fast?

Would you say to yourself – ‘I’m going to fail’ or ‘as long as I don’t give up, I can make anything happen’?

Would you create excuses why you can’t or would you need to believe there is always a way?

Would you tell yourself – ‘it will never work’, or ‘I can accomplish anything as long as I set my mind to it’?

The answers are pretty clear and the great thing about all of this is that YOU are in charge of it. You can posture your own body, you can replace any belief with a new one, and you can speak out of your mouth what you need to help you achieve success. You are already doing all of these things right now so why not do it so that it supports your outcome. Most of what we believe wasn’t derived from things we consciously considered, it came about as a result of experiences, some of which, we don’t even know their origin. The crazy thing is, we let some of these un-resourceful beliefs rule our lives, but the great news is we can change it in an instant. We just have the make the conscious decision to do so.

So let’s get practical, to start with, write down any dis-empowering beliefs that you have and then write the inverse. The more intense the empowering belief is, the better. You want it to crush the old belief. Also when you do this, you should be standing up and put yourself in a posture of the emotion that you want to create in your body. If you want courage, stand courageously. If you want certainty, stand in a posture of confidence. Then write it down and repeat, then own it!

For example:

Dis-empowering belief:

I’ll never write my book, I don’t have time.

Empowering belief:

My book is an absolute priority in my life, I will not let anything stand in my way.

It sounds a bit crazy and outrageous, but maybe crazy and outrageous is what you need right now. So try it on and then notice what works. Once you have practiced this several times, and you feel the shift, then it’s time to create strategies, goals and plans. How much better would it be, to be writing all of your goal setting from a emotionally resourceful place. How much more likely are you to continue towards your outcome if you practice this everyday?

What are some ways that you have fallen short in the past, how will you change that now? Or what are some great strategies that you have used in the past that worked great? Share them in the comments box below, I would love to hear from you!

I did an Ironman when others didn’t think I could. How did I achieve it? I had to have it. And I trained constantly. I competed as often as I could. Both the training and competitions instilled confidence in my ability to gradually be able to go the distance. I was focused and motivated by an overarching desire to be able to claim “I am an Ironman” – and no one can take that away from me. Of course doubt crept in, but it was through never giving up, learning from my “failures,” and also repeatedly telling myself that I could do it. And the day I became an Ironman, I achieved it by breaking each interval into multiple segments, cheering myself on for reaching each one. This is something of which I will always be proud, and it has helped me achieve many other things, since when doubt creeps in, as it does, I remind myself that “I am an Ironman” – I can do this.

Great comment! Sounds like you already have it down. A lot of people never get the connection – but as you know it’s worth effort. At the end of the day, when you really think about it, we have two choices, we can either stay stationary or engage!

This is a fantastic blog post! Thanks so much for sharing your tips on how to be in the right emotional state to actually follow through on goals, I can think of a few of mine that I can probably crank up a notch or two! Thanks so much for featuring on the blog this week 🙂

Wonderful straightforward insight! Thanks for posting and hosting!
My problem (whether it’s exercising, writing, or fulfilling New Year’s resolutions) has always been drive. I think the crux of it is I’m just too damn comfortable where I’m at. This year, for the first time in a decade, I decided against making resolutions. Not because I want to avoid failure but rather to enjoy the moment today and not be focused on tomorrow. However, I’m sure you can see the self-enabling going on there. I want to enjoy the moment (mindfulness, self-awareness, conscious enlightenment) but I want some of those moments to be productive as well. Balance is key – and I guess that is my true “goal” this year.
So, how do you achieve without obsessing about goals (I’m a bit OCD and all or nothing is my self-defeating mantra)?

Hi SC,
For a moment, I’m going to assume by your comment that you perceive your obsession as a problem. Obsession is about the constant preoccupation of the mind, which in turn for some people creates anxiety and the loss of peace. If this is you, then to deal with the obsession you really need to get down to the origin of that feeling. To do this may be an emotional experience, that’s ok, it’s meant to be what it needs to be, for you.

For instance, if I obsess about cleaning the house (which my wife would love) then, I would ask the myself the following:

Q: What is the feeling I get when I don’t stay up on the house work?
A: I feel anxiety.

Q: What is underneath the anxiety?
A: Fear of not being perfect.

Q: What does it mean to not be perfect?
A: It means that I won’t be liked or loved.

Q: What would happen if you weren’t liked or loved?
A: I would feel worthless.

Q: Can you think of a previous situation where you felt worthless?
A: Yes, what jumped in my mind was a time when I was a child and my dad was helping me with my math, he seemed so frustrated that I couldn’t get it and he told me if I didn’t learn my multiplication tables, I wouldn’t amount to anything – and I was never good at multiplication.

Q: Then the next step is to process that moment by asking, ‘what would wisdom (or God, or whatever you feel guided by) say to that situation?’ Take a moment for this answer to come, it’s not necessarily going to come from your head, rather it will come as small still voice deep inside – a voice that is totally free of the pain of that situation. Then write it down.

You’re an inspiration, James. Thank you. SK, for this post by your guest blogger, and thanks to you, Franklin Thomas, for these insightful words and insight into the process of achieving a goal or set of goals. As a case manager for people with developmental disabilities for over a decade, I knew how to set goals and measure them, how to set target dates, to get at the crux (burning desire and “drive”) of the goal, for example: “Working is important to Joe Client because in order to feel connected to his community he needs to have a job where he goes each day to interact with others and achieve a set of tasks, however that may happen with supports, to exercise his rights as well as be responsible for showing up and doing his job well.” Or, “Sally Client is determined to work at Walmart 20 hours per week so she will have money to buy nice things and go out to eat every weekend, because for her that is a normative activity and she wishes to feel included in her community.” For each example here, it was the client’s desire–their most burning passion–I would help them identify, then HOW to achieve that. Part of my and the team’s responsibility in serving these clients was to help them have faith in their abilities. Isn’t that ironic? Now I am in a position with my writing career to do the same for myself. I have heard my husband, his mother, two of my closest friends and my aunt remark of late how “driven” I am. Why? Well, a couple of months ago I did exactly as you said here in your blog and I began to change my language. “I want to write.” became “I MUST write.” and “I think I can be a successful paid and published author.” became “I AM going to be a successful paid and published author.” Thank you for echoing exactly what I have only recently began to implement for myself and validating that I have the power within myself to make it all happen.

That’s awesome Kim that you shifted your language so powerfully – it’s so important. Language constructs the meaning we give to our experiences. So when we create resourceful and empowering meaning, it changes us at the unconscious level, where things become automatic.

Each comment and reply resonates with me this morning. I had the drive and the “must” when losing weight and eventually competing in a figure competition. I know what that feels like. I’ve struggled getting the “must” into my writings and back into much of my life since my husband passed on, but its returning. I’m leaving a reply here, which is a great accomplishment for me. Thank you, SK for your initial email, which led me here and for inviting Franklin Thomas to guest blog. Thank you Mr. Thomas for sharing your insight. I’m glad I stopped by. I needed these words.

Terri, I’m glad this post and the comments that others contributed, resonated with you. I really appreciate you commenting too, and that you took a step out of your comfort zone to move forward. Sounds like you are doing great, considering what you have been through. Keep an eye on your ‘musts’, and keep moving forward, one step at a time. Thank you for sharing!